Larry called at midnight. “I went to see this improv show for the third time. How to describe it to you? Simply the best. Not just that, though. A leap above all other attempts to do it. Unrelatable to anything else, a different beast entirely. It will forever scar me that all those talented people at the Main Stage at Second City won’t ever make something like this. These people truly elevate themselves.
Oronte
John Griswold, who uses the pen name Oronte Churm at Inside Higher Ed and elsewhere, was born in Vietnam and raised in coal country in Southern Illinois. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in War, Literature and the Arts; Brevity; Natural Bridge; and Ninth Letter. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, listed as notable in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009, and included in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 3 (WW Norton).
He is the author of a novel, A Democracy of Ghosts, and a nonfiction book, Herrin: The Brief History of an Infamous American City.
He teaches in the MFA program at McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana.
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Most Recent Articles
July 10, 2010
“Who was it that said, ‘To be human is to be a conversation?’” Pearl London asks Philip Levine.
“I don’t know, but I’ll say it,” he replies.
This week I’ve been reading Poetry in Person: Twenty-five Years of Conversation with America’s Poets, edited by Alexander Neubauer (Knopf 2010).
July 2, 2010
It’s a feeling I’ve known since childhood, though it’s come sporadically over the years: An extreme sleepiness without fatigue, a dream without sleep, a staggering drunk without the buzz, a codeine high without skin rash. My eyes won’t focus; I stumble. Usually it occurs in summertime or in the tropics or subtropics, but not every hot place does it and sometimes I can sink into it in some cool interior such as a public library.
Melville describes this feeling, which he attributes to languor, washing over everyone aboard the ship Dolly:
June 30, 2010
Andrew Jackson seems to be thinking: I’m not sure I can hold up under the weight. Warren G. Harding seems to say: It tickles me pink to be in office. Franklin D. Roosevelt swears: I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new meal for the American people.
June 23, 2010
Five inches of rain fell here in the first two weeks of June, after a wet May. Lush plants I’ve never seen before have shot up from the mud, earwigs squirm out of lit barbecue grills, snakes slide sibilantly in the grass, frolicking squirrels pause in their orgies to wonder at their comrades smashed in the road, and crows the size of ravens bluster from the trees.
June 16, 2010
An acquaintance who was a mid-level IT manager likes to remind me, every time I say I resist technology, that I tend to use it early and often. We met, for instance, working for a Fortune 1000 company, where I was the first employee to write and assemble digital pages in the production process. Before that, thousands of catalog pages each year were mocked-up and type-spec’d by graphic artists, the copy was sent out for typesetting, and finished boards were shot and stripped by a traditional pre-press department that made color-separated plates for the printing press from film.
June 10, 2010
My Uncle Paul was a funny, kind man. His friends called him Zip for his vitality and spirit, and I never saw him angry.
June 4, 2010
My sons and I didn’t drive three hours south over Memorial Day weekend to score candy; we went to see friends in my hometown, visit the graveyard, attend an Italian heritage festival, and watch the parade, which was basic but authentic: A VFW color guard, dignitaries in Chryslers, local marching bands and a pom-pom squad, students from a dance academy, a howl of fire trucks, Shriners in tiny waxed cars, a giant American flag borne by a platoon of citizens, men walking Harleys like hobbyhorses while pouring on the throttle, and the mascots for a minor-league baseball team—a muscled-up miner
May 27, 2010
At the BookExpo America conference in New York City this week, the winners of the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards were announced, for the “best independently published works from 2009…selected by a panel of librarian and bookseller judges.” I’m happy and honored to be able to say that my novel won silver
